Did George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney Suffer from “Libertarian Economics”?

Even though I’m a staunch libertarian, I’m not under any illusion that everyone is open to our ideas. Particularly since, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we get falsely stereotyped as being heartless, hedonistic, anti-social, and naively isolationist.

That’s why I’m willing to accept incremental reforms. Compared to my libertarian dream world, for instance, the entitlement reforms in the Ryan budget are very modest. But they may be the most we can achieve in the short run, so I don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

But I do make the bad the enemy of the good. Politicians who expand the size and scope of government get on my wrong side, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

Which explains why I haven’t approved of any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.

With this in mind, you can imagine my shock when I read Robert Patterson’s recent column that blames recent GOP presidential woes on…you guessed it, “far-right libertarians.”

…in the political big leagues, …the GOP strikes out with the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections… That familiar lineup shares one big liability: libertarian economics, which has been undermining the Republican brand… That message represents the heart and soul of a party that started sleeping with far-right libertarians in 1990. …In the libertarian universe, “economic freedom” trumps everything: civilization, nation, statecraft, patriotism, industry, culture and family. This “economic freedom,” however, diverges greatly from the liberty that transformed the United States into an industrial, financial and military colossus.

What the [expletive deleted]!

Let’s go down the list of recent GOP presidential candidates and assess whether they were captured by “far-right libertarians” and their dangerous philosophy of “economic freedom.”

George H.W. Bush – He increased spending, raised tax rates, and imposed costly new regulations. If that’s libertarian, I’d hate to see how Patterson defines statism.

Do you see any libertarians? Me neither.

Robert Dole – All you need to know is that he described his three proudest accomplishments as the creation of the food stamp program, the imposition of the costly Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Social Security bailout. I don’t see anything on that list that’s remotely libertarian.

I also disagree with several of the policies that Patterson advocates, such as protectionism and industrial subsidies.

But that’s not the purpose of this post. Libertarians already face an uphill battle. The last thing we need is to be linked to a bunch of big-government Republicans when we share almost nothing in common on economic policy.

perhaps Mr. Patterson’s piece is less a factual account of real events… and more a strategic attempt to control the perceptions of his target audience… democrat and republican politicians alike have staked it all on the European model of the prosperous welfare state… and… it is not going well… Mr. Patterson is engaged in disinformation… styled to discredit “libertarian economics”… he is worried… as well he should be…

I never said that Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, and Romney were libertarians. But where in the world do you think the party and its standard bearers come up with their policy ideas related to trade, cuts in earned-benefit programs, privatization of Social Security, tax cuts for the upper brackets, esp. capital gains?

These highly unpopular ideas don’t come out of the RNC or even the House Republican Study Committee. No, these ideas come from a very effective think tank: the Cato Institute, and others. It’s a tribute to your influence.

Not all your policy ideas get very far — but that’s because they have no appeal with the voters. Others — most obviously trade and taxes, got a long way, and we can see the result: GOP electoral-college vote in the three presidential elections of the 1980s: 480. Average of the last three presidential elections, as Cato policies played a far greater role: 220.

Mr. Patterson, you seem to miss out on one key element: we do not have a true free market. We have corporatism. In an ideal world, a true free market would be self regulating. In the real world, this works just fine when you talk small businesses, mom-and-pop shops, the neighborhood handyman, etc. Where it breaks down is the mega-corporations. They are able to pool a lot more resources, force competition out of business, create their own monopolies, and then lobby the lawmakers to make things more favorable and profitable for them while either squeezing the little shops out or getting them government subsidies. Thus, we would not have a free market under the mega-corporations because it will severely limit our number of choices for any product or service. So to blame the libertarians is a red herring. Try blaming the system that keeps these elected people in power and lines their pockets with something more than lint.

Joe, I agree. No fan of bailout corporatism. Why I favor the “utility capitalism” that was the cradle and keeper of the American Dream of the Greatest Generation. See my piece from Philly Inquirer from last month: http://bit.ly/YBM1wd

You said, “cuts in earned-benefit programs, privatization of Social Security, tax cuts for the upper brackets, esp. capital gains.”

Earned benefit programs huh? The average person pays approx $100k into Medicare but receives approx $300k in benefits. If it were truly “earned”, the benefit would cut off at the dollar amount that a person puts into the program. This is nothing less than a government sponsored Ponzi scheme and it’s bankrupting our country. Trying to make “cuts” to these programs, with their tens of billions in unfunded liabilities is the responsible course of action. Only somebody seriously deficient in mathematics would think otherwise. However, this would seem to be many people in our country, which is also an indictment of our education system.

Privatization of SS – just as with Medicare, SS is a Ponzi scheme and has major unfunded liabilities. A majority of people, when asked/polled, would choose the private sector over the government with regards to their retirement investments. (Those private 401k investment things are pretty popular huh?) Any privatization program would allow people with more faith in government to allow the government to handle their retirement “investment”. But wouldn’t it be nice it we were free to choose?

“tax cuts for the upper brackets, esp. capital gains” – This is such a red herring of an argument. When the Republicans have pushed through tax cuts, it’s been for everybody, not just the “rich”. Capital gains taxes affect almost everybody, as a majority of middle class people invest in 401k accounts. Lower capital gains improve their investment gains just as much as the “rich”. The “rich” in our country already pay the lion’s share of taxes. Sticking them with higher tax rates won’t solve our issues, as past rate increases have shown. (ie – Laffer curve.)

The other issue that you fail to understand is that libertarian principles aren’t successful when they are “pick and choose”. You cannot cut taxes and increase spending severely without negative consequences, such as the Republicans did during the 2000s. Had the Republicans showed some restraint in their spending, coupled with tax cuts, I’d argue that our economy and the Republican brand might be in much better shape today. It also hurts their brand because how can you take the Republicans serious about spending restraint when they didn’t show any when they had control of the federal government!?!

As far as the popularity of making necessary changes to unfunded “earned benefit programs”; doing what is right isn’t about popularity. These programs will require massive tax increased on everybody, not just the “rich”, OR these programs will need to be reformed. They are simply unsustainable as they are currently designed. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that isn’t the case isn’t solving the problem nor does it show much concern for our country.

One of my objectives is to help the GOP adopt policy ideas that resonate with our natural base: middle-class voters. Attacking Social Security and Medicare is the surest way to keep our party in the minority. As Ronald Reagan understood, these New Deal-type social-insurance programs are highly popular; moreover, they are “conservative” policies in the sense that they are largely self-funded and require beneficiaries to pay into them. Very different than the social-welfare schemes of the Great Society, which Reagan very effectively scaled back in terms of their claim on GDP.

Remember, the pay-as-you go Social Security system is not an investment program and should not be evaluated accordingly. It is a social-insurance program that is worth preserving, as it offers a floor of financial security in old age that private markets cannot.

My concern about the tax changes since the 1986 Reagan reform is not so much that they favor the rich (which they do) but that they tax labor income at dramatically higher rates than “investment” income (as if working in the labor market is not an investment!). This also doesn’t sit well with average Americans and allowed Obama to paint Romney as Richie Rich. Perhaps more important, a two-tiered system prevents us from having the lowest possible tax rates applied equally to labor and property income alike. Instead, guys like Warren Buffett (and hedge-fund managers on Wall Street) can game the system by shifting all their earnings to “investment” earnings and thereby pay lower rates than working stiffs who don’t have option.

I fully agree with you about federal spending and regret that Bush 43 didn’t show much interest in restraining spending. But keep in mind that what is driving Obama’s huge deficits is not Social Security and Medicare but means-tested welfare spending, including Medicaid.

And of course, our spending and debt issues are symptoms of a far deeper crisis that I wish the GOP would address: the waning of the vast middle class and the loss of good-paying jobs for average Americans. If we could solve that problem, we would solve the deficit problem.

Patterson is 100% correct: The GOP fails because of the libertarian rhetoric. Most people don’t like libertarian rhetoric because they are fat, lazy, and stupid. And they love it when others have to pay for them getting fatter, lazier, and stupider. So when you use that god-awful libertarian rhetoric you just don’t win elections. If you want to win it is much better to promise the voter other peoples’ money. Much better to lie to them. Much better to patronize them while you rob them, threaten them, harass, defraud, malign, beat, and imprison them. Much better to pretend everything good they happen to have or receive was well deserved and brought to them by government. If you do that, the morons will vote for you every single time! GUARANTEE! In an even remotely responsible or compassionate society these lousy good-for-nothing dirtbags (read, “a significant majority of the upper, middle, and lower classes”) would be FORCED to rely on themselves (gasp! those poor oppressed masses!), to grovel in the dirt for a VOLUNTARY handout (which generally requires far more effort than an actual…uh…effort), or to starve. Their choice. The only option that would not be open to them is the ability to threaten theft, imprisonment, or murder to those who refused to be their perpetual sugar-daddies. And if they happened to be so stupid and worthless that they chose to starve, who the heck needs them? A compassionate person would be doing a disservice to the word compassion if he did anything other than persuade them to make a different choice. And certainly no sane person, libertarian or otherwise, should lose a wink of sleep over the fact that you just can’t “help” the willfully ignorant and lazy.

[…] But before digging into his column, I think that some of the angst on the right is misplaced. Why blame a Reagan-era message for GOP electoral problems when all the Republicans presidential nominees in recent years have favored big government? Does anybody really think that Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, and Romney were Reaganites?!? […]

[…] But before digging into his column, I think that some of the angst on the right is misplaced. Why blame a Reagan-era message for GOP electoral problems when all the Republicans presidential nominees in recent years have favored big government? Does anybody really think that Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, and Romney were Reaganites?!? […]

[…] I’ll go even farther than Steve. It’s not just that Obama’s victory didn’t translate into bigger government. I think the 2012 election was a closing chapter in an unfortunate era of big-government Republicanism. […]

[…] I’ll go even farther than Steve. It’s not just that Obama’s victory didn’t translate into bigger government. I think the 2012 election was a closing chapter in an unfortunate era of big-government Republicanism. […]

[…] But before digging into his column, I think that some of the angst on the right is misplaced. Why blame a Reagan-era message for GOP electoral problems when all the Republicans presidential nominees in recent years have favored big government? Does anybody really think that Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, and Romney were Reaganites?!? […]

[…] My bottom line is simple. If GOPers in both the House and Senate officially embrace the right kind of entitlement reform, then all that’s needed is a decent President after the 2016 elections (which, of course, presents an entirely different challenge). […]

[…] My bottom line is simple. If GOPers in both the House and Senate officially embrace the right kind of entitlement reform, then all that’s needed is a decent President after the 2016 elections (which, of course, presents an entirely different challenge). […]